


tell me you will hold me (in a golden afterlife)

by notsosweetsugar



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: 4 + 1, Canon Compliant, F/M, Mentions of Death, Nightmares, angst with a happy ending (kind of), it may be a little bit depressing, it's time canary but there's a bit of captain canary in here too, set around/post season finale, that may or may not involve a certain pretty bird, with one small exception
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-10 00:35:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6930781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notsosweetsugar/pseuds/notsosweetsugar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sara grabs his hand from the floor, showing her support. He looks almost suprised when he notices, and then raises his gaze at her. “<em>I</em> care about you.”</p><p>And she knows it's not much, but it's a start.</p><p> </p><p><strong>or</strong> four times sara comes to rip to remember the dead (and one time rip comes to sara to cherish the living).</p>
            </blockquote>





	tell me you will hold me (in a golden afterlife)

**Author's Note:**

> i was kind of just scrolling through tumblr doing nothing, when i got the idea. i tried to do their characters justice, i did, but i don't know how well it worked out. also i know, that time canary isn't really a ship a lot of people like, but i ship them (and after a finale, i think something might finally happen) and i'm not gonna apologize for that, so if someone doesn't like it, don't read and don't hate.  
> as always, i own nothing.

i.

 

Sara finds Rip in his office one night, when everyone else is asleep. He's drinking bourbon, that kind of buroun that's expensive and leaves the weird sensation in her throat when she drinks it. Which also happens to be her favourite kind.

There's a glass on the table and it's like it's waiting for her. She pours a drink and takes a seat, facing him. He looks different than usual and it occurs to her, that he's probably been watching the message from his family. He thinks it's a secret that he does that, but Sara figured it out a while ago. He does that from time to time, watches his son and his wife, but he never cries. There's just a well-masked sadness in his eyes the next morning, sadness that's left unnoticed by anyone but Sara.

And she only sees it because she has the same sadness in her eyes, too.

“You've been doing it again,” she states, taking a sip of her drink. It's not even a question, it's a statement. He could play dumb, pretend he has no idea what she's talking about, but he doesn't – not with her.

He would with anyone else.

“I was,” he confirms, although she doesn't even need it. She notices how the bottle is half empty by the time she gets to his office and she knows he only opened it that night.

“You can't keep doing this to yourself, you know?” somehow she doesn't sound particulary convinced to what she's saying, mostly because she's not. After all, if she had a message from Laurel, she would probably watch if over and over again.

“You say it like you're not doing the exactly same thing,” Rip says, but his voice is not accusatory. He knows.

He knows Sara asked Gideon from some old footages of Black Canary and she rewatches them in her bunk everytime she can't sleep – which is almost every night. Of course he knows, he's the captain after all. A Time Master. Nothing goes unnoticed by him.

And then again, nothing goes unnoticed by her, too.

“It's just,” he finally says, taking his now almost empty glass, “it's just, I though I had it all figured out.”

She knows he's not talking about her anymore. His mind is thousands of miles away, years away, with a certain brunette and her son.

“I though I will become a Time Master and then I will just come back home. To her. _She_ was my home,” he sounds broken, but he doesn't cry. He never cries.

Sara says nothing. She knows it's better to let him just tell someone what's on his mind. No interruptions, no fake _it's going to be okay._ Because this won't bring his wife back, nothing will.

“What pains me the most is that I couldn't save her. That I did everything, and I couldn't save her. Save them. It's my fault they're dead,” he hides his face in his hands, leaving now empty glass on the table. Sara takes a sip of her own drink.

“It's not,” she supplies, her voice steady, “your fault, I mean. It's not. The only person who can be blamed is Vandal Savage.”

“Yeah,” he says, “maybe.”

They both know it will be a long time for Rip to believe that.

 

 

ii.

 

The next time she finds herself wandering to his office at three in the morning, is because of her nightmares. She's not really expecting him to be there – she just wants to steel some booze – but when he is there, sipping some overpriced whiskey, she's not exactly suprised.

He is.

She knows how she has to look – her hair a mess, her eyes red from nightmares and crying in her sleep – a thing she hasn't done since ages. But he says nothing – he stands up, takes her hand at slowly guides her to the armchair he's been previously occupying. Then, he takes the glass from the table – somehow, there's always a glass, like it's waiting for her – and pours some alcohol to it. She takes it with a small, sad smile that doesn't reach her eyes.

“It's about Laurel,” she breaks the silence two drinks later. He's not pushing her to say anything, that's her own decision. She doesn't like talking about it with anyone, but Rip, she thinks, Rip will understand.

“I dream that I'm watching her die and I can't save her. Those are the dreams I have almost every night,” she doesn't sound too distressed by that, which is why it's obvious there's more to come. “Those dreams are terrible, but at least in them I'm not the one who's first hand guilty about her dying”.

In his eyes Sara sees he knows what's going to come next.

“But sometimes I dream it's me killing her,” she looks down, avoiding his gaze. She knows what she'll see – sadness, compassion. She doesn't want that. “When I wake up, I always know it's my fault. I know I wasn't the one stabbing her, but I wasn't there.”

She takes a few deep breaths, trying to calm her breathing. It's not working.

“It's all my fault,” she raises her voice. She's not mad at him, more at herself. “It's my fault because I wasn't there!”

“Sara,” Rip stands up from his seat and kneels in front of her, just like he did all those days ago, right after she asked him to go back in time to save Laurel. “Sara, hey, look at me!”

She raises her hand, but refuses to meet his eyes. He slowly touches her face, her cheek, and finally, she meets his gaze. There's… despair in there.

“I wanted to save her, for you. I went back in time to do that, right after I left you in 2016,” he states calmly. The sentence makes Sara freeze. That's not right. “I did it, I did it for you. But I couldn't save her. I took her a few days after her death and they were all dead. All of them, Oliver Queen, Mr Diggle and Miss Smoke. And you...” his voice wavers, just a little. “And I couldn't let that happen, I couldn't let you die. So I went back and I stopped myself, so that you – all of you – could live.”

He looks at her, desperate to hear something, desperate to see her reaction at this revelation. But she only stares at him with blank eyes, the remaining tears on her cheeks.

“Laurel,” she finally says, her voice hoarse, “she was a hero. I'm not.”

And with that, she frees herself from his hands, stands up and leaves his office, leaving him still on the floor and her drink unfinished.

 

 

iii.

 

They avoid each other after that, tiptoeing around one another during missions. If anyone notices, they don't tell anything. Sara knows Rip watches the message more often after their last confrontation because she watches Laurel too. She calls her, just to hear her voice when she says she's not able to pick up.

She never will be.

But it takes another two weeks to finally talk to Rip. She wakes up at two in the morning and feels like she won't be able to fall asleep again that night, so she picks up a hoodie and wanders through the halls of Waverider until she's outside Rip's office.

She wasn't actually planning on getting there, it's just happened. But she figures, since she's already there, she can as well enter.

He's not asleep, of course he's not. Just like all those nights they met, he's sitting in his armchair with a glass in his hand – this time it's bourbon again. She's suprised there's a glass waiting for her, as always, but she takes it and pours a drink. He doesn't say anything when she takes a seat on the floor, her back supporting the wall, her front facing him. He seems disturbed and Sara guess he's having a rough night. He wasn't in a greates of moods that day, he's not since their talk about Laurel, to be honest.

“I'm not mad,” Sara finally says, because she feels like this is the right thing to say. “You tried to save her, but you didn't succeed.”

He looks like he just lost a weight from his shoulders. But he's still sad. Heartbroken, really.

“It's your family, isn't it?” she asks, looking at him. He nods, not even trying to catch her gaze. It looks like he's deep in his thoughts again, barealy registering the world outside.

He takes a sip of his bourbon and Sara watches him, as he slowly stands up and leaves his jacket, as he pours himself another drink. She never really saw him like that – in just t-shirt and pants, he looks smaller. He's not the captain some fear or admire (or both), he's just a man, a broken man, to be exact. His t-shirt hangs on him and it's pretty obvious he lost his weight.

“I tried to be good, for him,” he speaks, whispers really, “I tried to be the father he always wanted – the hero. But instead, I only managed to cause his death.”

Sara sees in her imagination a boy just like Rip – heroic, with a british accent and that smirk she likes to see (but would never admit it). “He must've been great,” the words leave her mouth before she has a chance to think them through.

“He was,” Rip says, taking a seat – but on the floor next to her instead of in his armchair. He supports the same wall and his hand is inches from hers. “At some point, I think, I was the person he cared about the most, the person he worried about everytime I left. Now I don't have anyone, no one to care for me.”

Sara grabs his hand from the floor, showing her support. He looks almost suprised when he notices, and then raises his gaze at her. “ _I_ care about you.”

And she knows it's not much, but it's a start.

 

 

iv.

 

It becomes some sort of a routine after that – everytime one of them can't sleep or need someone to talk to, they would ask Gideon to wake the other one up and they meet in Rip's office. They just sit there, sometimes in silence, drinking, sometimes talking about the team or the people they lost. Sometimes they talk about Kendra and Carter, wonder what's going on with the two of them, but they never ask Gideon.

They agreed to let them live their lives.

One night, after a prticularly nasty nightmare – this time not about Laurel, though – Sara asks Gideon to wake Rip up, only to find out he's already awake and heading to his office.

He's there when she stands in the doorstep, two glasses full of whiskey waiting for her on the table. He's sitting on the floor again, his jacket on the armchair. He looks kind of distressed, but it's different this time.

“I had a dream about Leonard,” she says as she enters. His expression is blank when he looks at her.

“Me too,” he states.

It's weird, really, since Rip knows Snart and Sara were a thing and now they're sort of a thing, but not really. Just good friends.

“I miss him,” she finally says, after a few minutes of silence. They're once again next to each other, their bodies almost touching. After her statement, Rip puts a hand on her knee, to comfort her in a way, and she puts her hand on his.

It's not weird – she actually feels calmer when they hold hands like that.

“You would be good together,” Rip finally says. It's a statement, but there's something off about it, Sara can feel it, so she turns her head slightly to meet his gaze.

“Not like that,” the words come to her. “I mean, I did like him, I guess. If all of this didn't happen, we would probably be together right now. But I don't miss him like that. I miss him as a part of the team.”

He only nods, and then turns his face back to the floor, when their drinks stand. He passes her the glass and takes a sip from his own, feeling her shifting slightly so she can do the same.

“Everything is different now that he's gone,” Rip admits a moment later. Sara can only nod.

“It is.”

And they both know it: it's not good different, or bad different. It is just _different._

 

 

& v.

 

Sara wakes up to someone knocking on her door. It's 2:47 am. A couple of nights has been weirdly dreamless, but she still doesn't feel comfortable when she goes to sleep.

“It's captain Hunter,” Gideon supplies, when the knocking doesn't stop. Sara only smiles, not even sure why, and stands up to open the door. She only realises she's wearing too big t-shirt and some shorts, when she sees Rip's suprised expression.

“I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you,” he says, suddenly avoiding her gaze. She notices he's not wearing his jacket – he barely is, these nights – and he has a bottle of wine in his right hand. It's weird, because wine has never been their drink, but it has to mean something.

“It's okay,” she says softly and takes a few steps back to let him. “You can come in,” she invites, when doesn't move at her motion. He nods, and steps inside her tiny bunk.

She takes a seat on her bed, pulling the covers away, and pats a spot next to her. He only hestitates for a second before sitting next to her.

“Why wine?” she asks, as he opens the bottle, without spilling anything on them or her bed.

“I figured special ocasion requires a special drink,” he explains, suddenly sounding nervous. He looks at Sara and she only smiles, encouraging him to go on. “I never told you that, but when I went to destroy the meteorite, I wasn't going back. I saw my wife and my son there, I was sure I'm gonna die and finally be with them.”

Sara shivers a little and it's not because of the cold.

“But then I woke up and I realised, I wasn't ready to die just yet. I think that was the time I finally started forgiving myself. But I couldn't do that alone, and I wouldn't do that without you.”

She sighs, and looks at him.

“I only just realised I did it, after you went to your bunk last night. I also realised that I have people, who care about me, or so I like to think. But I most definitely have people _I_ care about. And one of those people is you, Sara. I probably care about you the most, to be honest.”

So that's why the wine. Is it going to be some sort of h-to-h night? Because Sara thinks she's not really ready for that just yet.

“But I can't forgive myself for not saving your sister if _you_ won't do that,” he says, and she freezes. So that's what it's all about. “I know it's not easy, but I want you to try.”

She feels weird, out of place, sitting with Rip Hunter on her bed, sharing a bottle of red wine. She avoided thinking about Laurel's death for so long, she focused on all the great moments they had. But he's right, she knows he is.

“Yeah,” she says, her voice silent. “Yeah,” she repeats, this time louder, “I think I can try.”

He smiles at her and she feels him touching her hand, like asking for a premission. She gives him one by linking their fingers together and resting her head on his chest. He's tense, at first, but then he relaxes, leaning back to the wall.

And in that moment, she knows it's not much.

But it's enough, for now.

 

**Author's Note:**

> \+ [tumblr.](http://natsclnt.tumblr.com)


End file.
